I received a copy of Poppy Rhys‘ The Melier in a recent Renegade Romance book box.
Running for her life…
Lucia hijacks a stolen cargo ship only to find she’s not alone. A giant, beastly alien slave with no memory of his past is now her newest acquisition, and she has no idea what to do with him.
Stuck together for the foreseeable future on the journey back to her home planet, Lucia struggles with the decision to keep him close or risk letting him fall back into enemy hands.
Outrunning the pirates in pursuit, and her own desires, is shaping up to be an impossible task.
Entertaining, but honestly, a structural mess in which the first third doesn’t match the last two thirds. I was frequently thrown for a loop when characters were suddenly setting off to do this or that with no explanation. Like, ‘Time to get ready for the party,’ and I, the reader, was like, ‘What party?’ The story wanders and feels plotless. At no point did I really feel Rhys had a plan for the story; everything feels random. By the end, I was still unsure if Lucia is meant to have one or two mates, for example.
There is an entirely pointless SA scene. It’s comparatively mild but absolutely extraneous. Leaving it out would have no effect on the outcome of the story. But even the consensual sex is disappointing. None (NONE) of the sex scenes have even a paragraph worth of foreplay. Sex is 100% just P-n-V. Boring.
I liked the characters, especially Soren and his brothers, and the family made for interesting side characters. But this was a pretty ‘meh’ read for me.
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